A Real Job in the Real World or Travelling The World?

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Photo credit: Flickr / The Library of Congress

There is a lot of things that I don’t understand in this world, the average of 10, astro physics and where exactly Helsinki is (after being forgetful about that more than ten times I finally looked it up and Helsinki is now planted in my brain as being part of Finland. Or is it Stockholm?)

But the one thing that I simply cannot wrap my mind around is why people don’t travel, why they spend their life in one place having a real job in the real world when it is far cheaper to travel the world. We live in an endless consumer driven society that encourages you to buy and buy, but never encourages you to go out and explore the world. You are only expected to find a real job, and start living in the real world.

But getting a real job, in the real world, is not cheap.

You have to find a full time job, something that will take up a lot of your precious time and energy. Then you have to buy new clothes to go with this new real job. An apartment near the real job is soon next, you can’t live with your parents anymore. TV, DVD player, laptop, furniture all the things to fill up that empty apartment comes next as you can’t look like a pauper when your new work friends come to visit.

Nights out, drinks, dinners – new outfits for those nights out, a new flash phone that comes with internet so you can stay connected with those new friends. Movie nights, club nights, social nights they are soon to follow.

Then the car. A flash car has to follow, because you can’t be seen showing up to work in your old red bomb. Parking tickets are next as there is no free parking where you work. Petrol takes up most of your wage.

All of this comes with a real job in the real world. But then this is not enough as you get that flash new shiny credit card and then the real spending begins and you are in debt up to your eyeballs and wonder how in the world people can travel around when it is costing you so much just to stay in one place.

Now that’s a real job in the real world. A real job in the real world costs about $45,000 a year. Now compare that to not having a real job and exploring the world.

Travelling slowly, only catching one flight to start out with, and moving down one continent to the next. Couchsurfing every other week. Working on organic farms for a couple of weeks at a time, not having to pay for food or accommodation. Simply finding entertainment with your hosts and the occasional conversation with the people back home with the real jobs in the real world.

Using public transport to get from one place to another, slow moving trains from one country to another, talking to the people around you or reading a book you haven’t read since childhood.

House sitting with free accommodation – not having to work. Only a couple of days here and there enough to get you to that next place to stay. Enjoying connecting with people instead of sitting bug eyed at the TV not thinking, after another draining day at the office.

Catching flights, travelling around. Talking to the person stocked to have gotten five days off of their real job in the real world, being given dumbfounded glances once you have relived that you have been travelling around for two years.

Working in a place for a couple of hours each day for food and accommodation as your host takes you around your new home. Sitting there peacefully watching the world go by, the uptight people in business suits walking past you to a job that they don’t like.

Not having a real job, not being in the real world and exploring the world. Cost: $14,000 per year.

There are endless Chirpys in the world that will try to tell you differently, spouting out that the only way to go is to have a real job in the real world. But those people have been caught up by their own Chirpys, they have become scared of travel, so do yourself a favour and ignore them.